Steve Ballmer speaks at the University of Southern California’s commencement ceremony on May 13, 2011.

Reuters

Graduates around the world gather at the end of spring for one final lesson: the commencement speech.

It’s a time when luminaries from business, politics and the arts deliver wisdom (and humor) to students eager for the next stage. Susan Wojcicki recalled watching the first item uploaded to Google Video—a purple, furry puppet, dancing and singing in Swedish—with no idea what to think. Until her children saw it—and cheered. Marc Benioff shared that time he did “what all lost thirty-somethings do: travel to India.”

We’ve pulled together memorable addresses from 2014 (with a splash from the speeches of yore). Did we miss any? Tell us what you think in the comments.

2014 Highlights

Bill Gates, founder and former chief executive of Microsoft, and Melinda Gates; together they co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Bill and Melinda Gates

Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News

Change the world through empathy. Stanford University, June 15, 2014.

“Now some people call you all nerds. And we hear that you claim that label with pride. Well, so do we.”

“When were you born? Who are your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. These things were given to us.”

“Optimism for me isn’t a passive expectation that things will get better; it’s a conviction that we can make things better—that whatever suffering we see, no matter how bad it is, we can help people if we don’t lose hope and we don’t look away.”

“I’ve seen over and over how much self-belief drives outcomes. And that’s why I force myself to sit at the table, even when I am not sure I belong there—and yes this still happens to me. And when I’m not sure anyone wants my opinion, I take a deep breath and speak up anyway.”

“My generation failed. We made progress, but we are still far from that 50-50 dream of mine where women will run half of our countries and companies and men will run half of our homes.”

“Your life’s course will not be determined by doing the things that you are certain you can do. Those are the easy things. It will be determined by whether you try the things that are hard… The times when you see things nobody else sees, and fear speaking out because how can you really be right when everyone else sees it differently? But you speak out anyway, and convince everyone else.”

Ideas Matter; be hardcore. USC Marshall School of Business, May 16, 2014.

“A great team, great energy and great hard work will never made up for a bad idea.”

“Hardcore people are like sharks. They move forward or they die.”

“I encourage you to pull out your phones and go to @stevebmicrosoft on Twitter. The outline of the speech is there in case you get lost. I fit the whole thing in 140 characters, so somebody better look at that.” (He wasn’t joking.)

Integrate business and philanthropy. University of Southern California, May 16, 2014.

“There I was, a lost thirty-something. And I did what all lost thirty-somethings do. I went to India.”

“If you are going to connect your business and your philanthropy, you better make sure it’s integrated deep into your culture—that it’s not just something that you’re going to tack on.”

“When we all drove in here today, we drove through some high fences and high gates—because only a few blocks from here, are some of the most impoverished people in the world. And that’s why our commitment to others is so important and everlasting: Don’t let those walls be a metaphor for your own life.”

“We opened the first video and waited—it was of a purple, furry puppet, dancing and singing in Swedish… It was probably one of the first user-generated videos anyone had ever seen. I had no idea what to think. But my kids knew what to think: they cheered.”

“You can be the crazy kid in some lady’s garage, going on and on and on about how you’re going to change the world, and then you can go out, and actually do it.”

“I am so happy to see so many of you Redditors actually manage to graduate.”

“We weren’t setting out to do these huge things, we were just starting with solving a problem we hoped a few other people had. No one starts out with this grand plan; no one starts out with this grand vision. We’re all just hacking it; we’re all just figuring it out.”

“Play like you have zero lives remaining. Take every opportunity you can. Hold those people who take care of you, who treat you well, hold them close to you.”

Innovations come from perseverance, not brilliance. Michigan State University, May 2, 2014.

“As I look back at the past 30 to 40 years of Wipro, our company grew from about $4 million to about $8 billion today. I can hardly remember any decisive turning point that came from any single great innovation. Everything over time was steady, painstaking work. Very few innovations of big ideas can compensate for lack of hard work and perseverance.”

“Too many people are trapped in efforts to do things they think will impress people around them. I have not seen this having returns in the long run.”

Be curious, open and flexible. Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, May 17, 2014.

“Most businesses rise or fall not because of the product, but the people. At the end of the day, the team you build is the company you build.”

“America itself was a startup. Two hundred and fifty years ago, America was just an idea. That idea, powered by people, passion and perseverance and by good policy and strong partnerships, led us to forge a strong and stable democracy and enabled us to build the largest and most innovative economy in the world.”

Take risks now. University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, May 16, 2014.

“Focus on signal over noise: A lot of companies get confused—they spend money on things that don’t actually make the product better. At Tesla, we’ve never spent any money on advertising. We put all of the money into R&D and manufacturing and design, to try to make the car as good as possible.”

“As you get older, your obligations increase—and once you have a family, you start taking risk not just for yourself, but for your family as well. It gets much harder to do things that might not work out. So now is the time to do that. Take risks now; do something bold.”

Hungry for more wisdom? Here are some of the best speeches from over the years:

Believe the dots will connect; death is life’s change agent. Stanford University, June 12, 2005.

“If I had never dropped in on that single [calligraphy] course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.”

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.”

“I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me: I still loved what I did.”

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be. Because death is very likely the single-best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent.”

We are our choices. Especially the hard ones. Princeton University, May 30, 2010.

“Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy—they’re given after all. Choices can be hard.”

“When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.”

Do something you love—then challenges will have more purpose. Belle Haven Community School, June 8, 2011.

“What people talk about when they’re talking about Facebook is a kid in college had an idea and all of a sudden it became this big business. It couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“It’s not about a single moment of inspiration or brilliance, it’s about years and years of hard work and practice before you get there.”

“When you go home to dinner and you have the worst-tasting vegetable on your plate, you can make yourself eat it if you want. But if you instead have the option to play a game, even if it’s really hard, if it’s something that you like, you are going to power through it and find a way to do it. Life is like that a lot of the time—you can make yourself do challenging things that you don’t like, but if you actually do stuff that you love, it’s a lot easier, and takes on a lot more purpose.”

“You know I have to start by tweeting this. I’m a professional so this will only take a second.”

“You can’t plan a script. The beauty of improvisation is you’re experiencing it in the moment. If you try to plan what the next line is supposed to be, you’re going to be disappointed when the other people on stage with you don’t do or say what you want them to do and you’ll stand there frozen.”

“When I was your age, we didn’t have the Internet in our pants. We didn’t even have the Internet not in our pants—that’s how bad it was.”

“People bemoan a generation who grew up living life in front of screens, always connected to something or someone. These people are wrong. The fact that we are all connected now is a blessing, not a curse, and we can solve many problems in the world as a result.”

“Life is not lived in the glow of a monitor. Life is not a series of status updates. Life is not about your friend count. It’s about the friends you count on.”